The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people

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G

EORGE

W

ASHINGTON

First Inaugural Address

April 30, 1789

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

Secular historians ignore George Washington’s ward Nelly Custis, who wrote that doubting his Christian faith was as absurd as doubting his patriotism. But they cannot ignore this mountain of evidence suggesting Washington’s religion was not Deism, but just the sort of low-church Anglicanism one would expect in an eighteenth century Virginia gentleman. His “sacred fire” lit America’s path toward civil and religious liberty.

WALTER A. MCDOUGALL

Pulitzer Prize winning Historian

Professor of History and International Relations, University of Pennsylvania

Author of

“Freedom Just Around the Corner: A New American History.” 1585-1828

George Washington’s actions as a soldier and statesman made republican government a reality and shaped the American understanding of liberty as a divine blessing and a sacred trust. Washington’s actions were, in no small measure, the products of his character. Washington’s character, as Peter Lillback shows in George Washington’s Sacred Fire, was deeply informed by his Christian faith. Dr. Lillback buries the myth that Washington was an unbeliever—at most a “Deist’—under an avalanche of facts. He demonstrates that our founding father’s commitment to kindling and nurturing “the sacred fire of liberty,” far from reflecting a rejection of Christian beliefs, flowed directly from them.

ROBERT P. GEORGE

McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions, Princeton University

An enlightening, engaging, and long overdue correction of the falsehood that Washington lacked faith.

RODNEY STARK

Baylor University

For several decades, there has been a consensus among academics that George Washington was not really a Christian, but instead was a Deist. Peter Lillback’s work demolishes this conventional wisdom. He provides comprehensive evidence and penetrating arguments which demonstrate that Washington was indeed a consistent Christian and in particular that his religious beliefs were those typical of a devout low-church Episcopalian in eighteenth-century Virginia. This volume will enable today’s Christians to refute the current falsehoods being propagated about the faith of this greatest of America’s founding fathers and to speak a truth that has great meaning in the historical and cultural debates of our own time.

JAMES KURTH

Department of Political Science

Swarthmore College

History is a powerful tool. Used to press an agenda in the guise of recording facts it can yield dangerous results. These results are the more nefarious because the means of handling the facts appear so neutral. Hence the confusion about America’s founding fathers. For generations George Washington has been portrayed as an Enlightenment Deist. This view helps reduce the likelihood of a strong Christian influence in early America, which in turn helps promote the cause of secularism today. Peter A. Lillback has given us a nearly exhaustive reckoning with the true Washington, who turns out to be no Deist at all, but a professing Christian, a humble yet zealous follower of Christ. This volume will move the reader as well as persuade him that America’s first president was also a premier man of God, whose religion was quite contrary to that of Thomas Paine or Lord Shaftesbury. Neither his life nor his leadership make any sense apart from his commitment to the church and to biblical faith. We praise Dr. Lillback for the enormous labor, a labor of love to be sure, but a giant effort dedicated to the truth. We owe it to his thorough research and engaging polemics to give a hearing to George Washington’s Sacred Fire. When we do, we will discover, in the bargain, that we have here history as it ought to be.

WILLIAM EDGAR

Professor of Apologetics, Westminster Theological Seminary

The reconstruction of the private religious convictions of a public leader is always a most tricky and complicated historical task. In English history, the figure of Oliver Cromwell has proved enigmatic, as historians have sought to co-ordinate his private statements and actions with his public deeds as army general and then Lord Protector. In George Washington, American history has its own Cromwell: a leader of such enormous stature, and who arouses such passionate emotions, that it is difficult to separate the facts from the fiction. For a long time it has been assumed that this founding father was a man of the Enlightenment, a Deist; yet, with this book, Dr Lillback seeks to challenge that, and marshals awesomely detailed evidence that another category, that of a broadly orthodox Anglicanism, provides a more accurate way of setting Washington’s religious convictions in context. Whether one agrees or disagrees, it is clear this book is a significant and serious challenge to the typical historiography which can clearly no longer be taken for granted.